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Adam Vaughan: The thorn in Rob Ford's side

In only his second term, Vaughan&rsquo;s mouth has turned him into the face of the opposition to Rob Ford.

By Daniel DaleUrban Affairs Reporter

Sun., Aug. 19, 2012

For better or for worse, the man is a machine. Adam Vaughan offers up colourful quotes even when he is doing an interview on the subject of his colourful quotes.

Adam Vaughan quote: “Rob Ford is the mayor of slogans, and so sometimes you have to confront him with a slogan.”

Adam Vaughan quote: “If it required a paragraph, I could give you a paragraph. If you want a poem, I could give you a poem. But when you’re dealing with a politician whose idea of political philosophy is ‘subways, subways, subways,’ the response has almost got to be as short and as stark as the proposition.”

Adam Vaughan quote: “There’s no point in pussyfooting around. If he’s wrong, he’s wrong. I just categorically and fundamentally disagree with his view of the world.”

Adam Vaughan quote: “He takes potshots, someone’s gotta give a potshot back. That constitutes ‘balance’ in this day and age. And for some reason, I seem to be the go-to guy for potshots.”

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Lots of councillors criticize Ford. No councillor criticizes him more aggressively, more succinctly, or more entertainingly than Vaughan. And, so, no Ford critic is in the news more often. In only his second term on council, Vaughan’s mouth has turned him into the face of the opposition.

His fans — and he has enough fans to make him a credible potential mayoral candidate for 2014 — see him in relation to Ford much the same way fans of The West Wing saw fictional president Jed Bartlet in relation to George W. Bush: the eloquent, compassionate, deeply informed progressive fighter the people would've elected if the people were smart.

His detractors see a know-it-all downtown lefty with an unearned smirk. And he has enough detractors to make people close to him, people who think he could be mayor, tell him he should swallow some potshots, focus on his ward work, soften his tone.

“Everybody who talks to me tells me I need to be nicer,” he says.

He mock-protests for a moment, his voice rising in feigned childlike innocence: “I am nice! Why does everybody think I’m not nice?” But he knows the answer.

He was a television reporter for 10 years before he was first elected in Ward 20 (Trinity-Spadina) in 2006. As part of the job, he says, he watched “endless” footage of himself. Even when he was on the other side of the microphone, posing confrontational questions to councillors as an openly opinionated journalist for Citytv, it was there.

“I know what people are referring to,” he says. “There is an edge to the way in which I talk and the way in which I think.”

In a July column in the Toronto Sun, former Ford press secretary Adrienne Batra compared him unfavourably to his late father, the journalist and councillor Colin Vaughan. Less than a month later, he does the same thing himself.

“I’m nowhere near as charming as my dad,” he says. “My dad was able to do it with a smile, and everyone got it. I have a bit of an edge to me, I guess, that’s a bit different. As I tell a lot of people, I take after my mom. She was a tough — you didn’t mess with my mom.”

He says he has made an effort to be “gentler.” To stop himself from getting in trouble with ill-advised heckles during council meetings, he quietly draws satirical cartoons of Ford and Ford’s allies. He refuses to sign up for Twitter, the snark-friendly online social network on which his zingers would be a sure hit, because he doesn’t think he could avoid “blurting” things he would later regret.

Fine and good. If he wants to be mayor, doesn’t he still need to get cuddlier? “If being mayor means that I can’t be Adam Vaughan,” he says, “then maybe Adam Vaughan shouldn’t be mayor.”

He mutters them to himself. He lobs them at council neighbour Doug Ford, sometimes making Ford laugh. In what has become known on press row as a “drive-by,” he sometimes shares them with reporters and walks away before anyone can respond.

“Perhaps some of the effectiveness, or some of the reason I get quoted a lot, is I do have a fascination with really-well-constructed sentences,” he says. “I will think of a one-liner, and — you’ve seen me — I’ll workshop it all day long until I get it down to a perfect quote.” He adds: “I kid you not: I actually read quotes. You know those books of quotes? I read ‘em all the time.”

Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday describes Vaughan as a gasbag attention-seeker. “I see him quite often almost forcing himself on the media,” Holyday says. “If I’m doing an interview, the next thing I know, he’s standing around the periphery. Whether he’s been asked to or not.”

The assembled cameramen rarely or never mind his presence. Council’s 15-odd-member left-leaning faction is populated by perfectly professional communicators. None of them, save for perhaps Gord Perks, consistently makes a point with the same clarity and force.

“One of Adam’s great strengths, from all his years in media, is: he knows how to condense a message,” says Perks, a friend. “I spent years as an activist trying to learn how to do it, but Adam is a real master.” Perks adds: “He’s been remarkably skilled at cutting through the hot-button rhetoric of the current administration and reminding people of what’s really at issue.”

His one-liners — and even his few-word slogans, like “war on children,” “radical conservative agenda” and “part-time mayor” — regularly influence coverage of both the administration and policy debates. They have also helped him establish a citywide following. Even when he is hyperbolic, he gives a voice to the thousands of residents who feel disrespected by Ford and want someone to give ‘em hell.

But Vaughan’s own comments can sound disrespectful toward Ford and his supporters, whom he calls “extraordinarily defensive.” And, as Perks says, Vaughan occasionally “says some stuff, without thinking it all the way through, that might cause people to groan and say, ‘What is he going on about now?’”

The Sun has taken particular delight in Vaughan’s rise. Appearing eager to find itself a post-David Miller municipal piñata, the conservative tabloid mentioned him 334 times between December 2010 and Thursday — more than even powerful TTC chair Karen Stintz. On comment boards and in coffee shops, no left-leaning councillor inspires nearly the same vitriol.

“People I speak to — I wouldn’t even want to say what they think of him,” says Holyday. “There’s not a chance in hell,” he says, that Vaughan could beat Ford in a one-on-one race.

“I don’t think he’d do very well in Etobicoke or North York or Scarborough. I don’t think they buy his politics. Plain and simple. At least when he does criticize, when he does speak to the media, those who are paying attention to the media know what he is. And I think that’s to his detriment.”

Very premature 2012 polls, however, showed Vaughan beating Ford handily head-to-head and faring just fine outside his downtown base. In the no-party municipal system, name recognition is especially valuable electoral currency. Vaughan has amassed more of it than the folksier, more senior, suburban Ford critic who is pondering a mayoral bid, Councillor Shelley Carroll.

And there is a precedent that suggests a polarizing councillor known for his unrelenting criticism can win the mayoralty even if he goofs once in a while and even if a lot of people in large swaths of the city never stop loathing him. The precedent’s name is Rob Ford.

“If people don’t like you, I understand the handicap there. But I also know that people don’t like politicians who fake it,” Vaughan says. “If Rob has had any success, it’s because Rob is who Rob is.”

He thinks the people who tell him to be nicer are giving him “good advice”; “I do listen to that,” he says. But if he runs for mayor, he makes clear, he will be running as the same sharp-elbowed intellectual quipmeister he has always been.

Adam Vaughan quote: “My intelligence is my intelligence; I’ll live or die by it. My wit is my wit; I’ll live or die by it. My personality is my personality; I’ll live or die by it. The idea of reinventing myself to become more likeable — I don’t know how you’d do it, but I wouldn’t do it if I knew how. I am what I am.”

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